Carlton Television


Carlton Television was the ITV franchise holder for London and the surrounding counties from 9.25am every Monday to 5.15pm every Friday. The company is now managed with London Weekend Television as a single entity, but the two companies are still separately licensed. The station is owned and operated by ITV plc under the licensee of "ITV Broadcasting Limited". Carlton has been branded on air as "ITV1" since 28 October 2002. Carlton Television Ltd, the original holder of the licence, has since been dissolved. Carlton UK Television Limited however is now known as ITV Consumer Limited and legally operates ITV plc's websites. As Carlton's name has no relation to its region, its on-screen identity has been completely removed. Other regions have kept their original company name as a region name and in their local news name.

Formation

Carlton Television was originally set up by Michael Green's Carlton Communications to bid for an ITV franchise after Green failed to buy into Thames Television, the London franchise, in 1985. On 16 October 1991, Carlton won the "Channel 3" franchise to broadcast to London during weekdays from January 1993, as a result of winning the silent auction used to renegotiate the new ITV franchises. Thames bid £32.5M, while Carlton Television placed a bid of £43.2M and CPV-TV placed a bid of £45.3M. CPV-TV was the highest bidder, but was eliminated for failing the quality threshold; since both Thames and Carlton were deemed to have passed the quality threshold, the franchise was awarded to Carlton for having submitted the higher cash bid of the remaining two companies. Carlton also bid for the South and South East franchise, losing to Meridian Broadcasting. Some commentators consequently speculated that Thames had fallen victim to a "government vendetta", whilst others felt that the auction had been won fairly.
Carlton did not buy Thames' studios, instead having its headquarters in St Martin's Lane in the West End and opting to rent transmission space at LWT's London studios. Also, unlike Thames which had been both a production company and a broadcaster, Carlton chose to commission all of its programming from independent production companies.

Launch

Carlton Television took over from Thames at stroke of midnight on New Year's Day 1993, broadcasting from a newly opened playout centre managed by London News Network, a subsidiary company co-owned by Carlton and London Weekend Television from LWT's facilities on the South Bank in London.
At the stroke of midnight, following ITN's Into The New Year bulletin featuring the Westminster clock tower chimes, technicians at the Crystal Palace transmitter switched from Thames' Euston Road headquarters to the LNN playout centre from where Carlton went on-air with an opening ident featuring Maurice Jones, the then-town crier of London, with the then-famous slogan of Carlton, "This is Carlton Television for London", ringing the bell three times, and the first announcement from continuity announcer Graham Bannerman. He started the first continuity announcement for Carlton with these words: "And a very Happy new year. Welcome to 1993, and our first programme live from Trafalgar Square, here's Chris Tarrant with A Carlton New Year." The station's first programme was the entertainment special A Carlton New Year, produced in-house and presented by Chris Tarrant. After the special, the movie Best Defense, which starred Dudley Moore and Eddie Murphy, aired, which began after Carlton's second ident, with the sea cadets of the Royal Navy, saying the slogan, was shown. Idents from January to December 1993 had the slogan: "This is Carlton. Television for London.", "This is Carlton" or "You're watching Carlton."
Unlike Thames, which had been both a broadcaster and a production company, Carlton chose to commission most of its programming from independent production companies although its contract to hold the ITV franchise licence disallowed the company to commission all programming so Carlton still had to produce a minimal amount of programming in-house.
The first Carlton-produced programme to be broadcast nationally was Surprise Party, effectively the same format as This Is Your Life, previously a mainstay of predecessor Thames Television. Hosted by Michael Parkinson, the first celebrity to be the subject of the show was entrepreneur Richard Branson. At the end of the hour-long show, Michael Parkinson told viewers to keep their eyes out for another Surprise Party. However, no further programmes were ever made.
Alarm bells had been ringing before Carlton even transmitted as part of the ITV network, as one notable commission with wide publicity was The Good Sex Guide, inviting scorn and derision from conservative newspapers, before it had actually been broadcast. Aptly, its first commercial break featured an advert for the Vauxhall Carlton.

Broadcasting

In May 1994, the Independent Television Commission criticised a number of ITV stations as part of its review for the first 12 months of the new franchise in 1993. Carlton Television was condemned for providing a wide range of 'unimpressive and very disappointing' programmes for the ITV network, which were 'neither distinctive nor noticeable high quality'. This criticism came after Carlton and Granada secretly planned to axe News at Ten in the chase for ratings, a move which was foiled by the ITC. Carlton, angered by this criticism, responded: 'In the first year, Carlton launched 43 brand new series and 20 new single programmes, sustained audience levels and played a full part in ITV network; successes far outweighed failures.' A few days later, Carlton won two awards from the Royal Television Society's 'programme and tech awards' in London; Margie Clarke was named 'Best Female Presenter' for Carlton's The Good Sex Guide; while Old Bear Stories won the Children's Entertainment award.
During a 1994 review, ITC commented that Carlton had made improvements, in its factual and drama output, while its children's programmes were 'impressive', but more remained to be achieved. In 1995, its regional programming was regarded as high quality but with few innovations; The Good Sex Guide was guilty of breaching taste and decency requirements with little educational classifications, which resulted in the company receiving two written warnings from the ITC. Once again, in 1997, Carlton was criticised for failing to ensure its programming complied with the programmes code, while the number of formal interventions from the ITC had increased from four in 1995 to eight; but its regional programming continued to be of high quality.

Factual inaccuracy in 1996 documentary

Carlton found itself at the centre of a major controversy about truthfulness in broadcast journalism in May 1998, when The Guardian carried a series of articles alleging the wholesale fabrication of a much-garlanded 1996 documentary, The Connection, which had purported to film the route by which heroin was smuggled into the United Kingdom from Colombia. An internal inquiry at Carlton found that the allegations made by The Guardian were in large part correct, and the then-regulator of the industry, the ITC, punished Carlton with a record fine of £2 million for multiple breaches of the UK's broadcasting codes. The scandal led to an impassioned debate about the accuracy of documentary production.

Expansion

Changes in legislation concerning media ownership enabled Carlton to buy out many of the other ITV stations, including Central Independent Television, Westcountry, and part of HTV, as well as the rights to the archives of ITC Entertainment and its former sister company ATV. Rank Film Distributors, including its library of 740 films, was purchased by Carlton in 1997 for £65 million. HTV was the only region owned by Carlton not to be subject to a full on-screen rebrand as 'Carlton'. Both 'HTV West' and 'HTV Wales' stayed with their then-current idents; however, upon Carlton's purchase, the animated introduction and music to the idents were replaced by the sequences and audio in use with Carlton's graphical package. However, the logo and end-board of the ident remained unchanged, using the generic hearts look of 1999. Carlton also did not acquire most of HTV's production facilities; these were retained by Granada.
The ITC archive is financially lucrative, since it includes such popular series as Thunderbirds, The Prisoner, and The Saint, as well as such feature films as On Golden Pond. Carlton released much of the Rank library on video and DVD via its own label in the UK, and via A & E Home Video, Acorn Media, MGM Home Entertainment, and Lions Gate Home Entertainment in the USA. A large number of these films were screened on Carlton's digital movie channel, Carlton Cinema; however, it closed in March 2003. The merger with Granada led to the use of the Carlton name falling into disuse, and Carlton Video became part of Granada Ventures.

ITV Digital

In 1997, Carlton formed a partnership with Granada and BSkyB to bid for some of the multiplexes for the new digital terrestrial network. In June of that year, it was successful in its application, and began the service, OnDigital, under the condition BSkyB withdrew from the group. OnDigital was rebranded as ITV Digital in 2001, before its collapse in 2002.

Merger and unification

In September 2002, Carlton and Granada, having now acquired all the franchises in England and Wales, made the decision to remove all regional idents, continuity and branding, and replace them with the single brand, ITV1. English regional idents were to only precede regional programming, and regional announcements were pre-recorded from London. Unlike Granada-owned regions, Carlton used dual-branding on its regional idents with the Carlton logo, so the Carlton Westcountry and Carlton Central regions were simply known as ITV1 Carlton. Granada-owned franchises preferred simply to place text of the region name under the ITV1 logo. This went on until December 2003, when Carlton dropped the practice, resulting in changing the brands from Carlton Central to ITV1 for Central England, from Carlton Westcountry to ITV1 for the Westcountry. The HTV regions were re-branded ITV1 Wales and ITV1 West of England in 2002.
On 2 February 2004, Carlton Communications plc merged with Granada plc, creating ITV plc, which now owns all of the ITV franchises in England and Wales under the ITV1 brand. The three English Carlton ITV regions were reverted to their previous names: ITV1 for Central England again became ITV1 Central, ITV1 West of England became ITV1 West and ITV1 for the Westcountry became ITV1 Westcountry, prior to regional programming in their respective areas.